


The White Rabbit

by Calyps0



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22669051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calyps0/pseuds/Calyps0
Summary: Jumping into the rabbit hole is easy. Getting back out is the hard part.
Kudos: 1





	The White Rabbit

He is three when he _falls—falls—falls—_

—out of reality and into a crueler version of himself.

Here is a voice crooning, here is a voice demanding, offering a soft-handed open palm and a lovely bitter potion of lies. _Drink me,_ it says—

Like he would ever disobey.

And so he _drink—drink—drinks_ —and then _shrink—shrink—shrinks—_ until the boy he once was is disappearing, replaced with a sinister cruel-edged grin—

And a voice he has only ever heard inside his head.

\---

At ten he must _grow—grow—grow—_ and so he _eat—eat—eats—_ crunching and chewing that which he must leave behind. The memories soar down his throat; he swallows past the lump, sips his own answering tears.

Hardened easily, he still _wait—wait—waits._

It is not time yet. But soon.

\---

At eighteen, limbered and already betrayed once, not yet twice, he is still _wait—wait—waiting—_ for that crystal sigh, for that liquid vow. His tears pool in his dreams, like midnight-spattered lakes, stars and sorrow forever intertwined.

But out of the dream—

— _again—_

—he _fall—fall—falls—_

— _headlong_ —

And he is ready to meet the voice he has only ever heard inside his head.

\---

So through the door he goes (his true self is small enough now—tucked away behind the tangle of what he will soon become).

Through the door, through the maze, higher, higher still.

Green like plasma, green like the death he once would have felled upon, surrounds him in hedges tall as his fears. And speaking to him with a crooked grin, eyes alight, looking as if wisp and smoke make him up, is that voice—

The voice he has only ever heard inside his head.

The figure is pale and ghostly, and in the pooling sunlight it seems to shift in and out, like a dream, leaving only snatches of garnet-eyes or gleaming, sharp-hewn teeth.

 _You’re late,_ the voice says, all tomcat-hiss and river-crunch haw, and it reaches forward to—

_—grab him by his shirttails—_

Boy and voice disappear.

\---

Jumping into the rabbit hole is easy. Getting back out is the hard part.

\---

At twenty-nine, he can’t count all the betrayals, only remembers snatches, like the deadly stripe of emerald above his head.

The voice is with him always now, but at this moment it is faint and mewling because there is something, someone else—

He is chasing the white rabbit, the girl in white, who also happens to be _late—late—late_ , who is always running, always moving, even as a time ago she would have only ever stayed in one place. She exits her burrow and _runs,_ taking flight, and he feels he _must—must—must_ follow.

In her wake are grains of sand, and he follows her footsteps in that golden trail, which—

Is spilling _down, down, down_ , through thin-blown glass. A clock is spinning wildly, and he knows without asking that this countdown is his own.

_Hop hop hop._

Time is running out.

\---

There is a caterpillar on leafmould, camouflaged like the mask he has worn and forgotten—perhaps in that tear-lake, under the sorrow of star-shore. When he leaves the insect behind, it glitters in his periphery, transformed, with wings like a fiery sun exploding.

Like that disaster in the sky—

All red, all weeping, all fresh blooming roses.

It rains and rains and _rains_ , and everything smells like flowers and tea leaves and muddy, damp earth.

He runs and runs and _runs_ , back and forth and sideways and at one confusing point upside-down. But he cannot leave behind the voice, cannot leave behind his search—that white rabbit, that golden sand, that ticking clock.

Red smears his periphery.

Gold stains in front of him.

Behind him is colorless—he cannot remember the shape of his past. He closes his eyes.

_Go, go, go._

Time is running out.

\---

In the forest, under that lush and green canopy where silver shadows cannot reach, he loses the path and gains it again.

Everything is a maze, because there are _three—three—three_ mistakes, _three—three—three_ men who have fallen, and he’s been trapped in this dizzying array more than nine— _or nine-hundred_ —times.

He always follows.

He always falls.

Red beside, gold ahead.

Emptiness behind, and everywhere in-between.

\---

The gardens are speaking cruel words to him, and this might be an echo of his past as much as it could be his future. But he pays it no mind because here, _here_ is the girl whose clothes are pale as rabbit’s fur, carrying a sword sharper than a pointed star.

She carries around her a halo of golden sand and the reverberating silence of the beats between a clock’s arrowed hands.

He _jumps_ —

Into her mind, into the rabbit hole, past sand and silence and fallen silver shadows.

\---

And just like that, the spell is cast, and broken, and cast again. He leaves her mind, he leaves the maze, her sand and silence disappear.

But he is still underground, still in the burrow.

The voice inside his head is scrabbling at paper-thin walls.

Red besides, within and without.

He reaches for gold, he reaches for white. Soft as rabbit fur, as flower petals.

A chink of light stutters somewhere, muffles the voice just enough, offers a slice of clarity on a patterned porcelain plate. 

He eats.

\---

When he sees the rabbit again it is not in a warren, or a sandbox, or an hourglass, but in rain like the tear-lake of his dreams, rain he would keep bottled in a little labeled jar.

 _Drink, drink, drink,_ he realizes.

Rain, tears, salt.

Clarity like gold, like diamond.

He drinks.

\---

His fingers brush a hand as soft as flower petals, as golden as sunlight.

And _time—time—time—_

Is frozen.

\---

Of all the most inane things that have happened in this land, the least surprising by far should be a cat turning into a queen.

But the voice was never quite a cat, and isn’t quite a queen, but when it reclines his head with bored ambivalence the resemblance to both is there.

The voice is dripping in gold, but it is not like the gold of sands, or rabbit warrens, or time-ticking silence as deep as sorrow.

This is the gold that taints the edges of red, this is the gold that precedes chasms and elastic silence.

His sword blooms red as roses. Hers is blue as tears.

_Tick—_

The last grain falls.

_Tick—_

The clock strikes twelve.

_Tick._

Time has run out.

\---

The rabbit turns. She ignites that silver sword, the one sharper than the point of a star.

And so he must decide, _now—now—now._

He turns, too. Ignites his blade. It is as red as his periphery, as red as blooming roses, as red as bruising memories.

\---

They—

 _Attack, c_ urling like vines around limbs of fevered knights whose helms are the shiny ruby-red of playing cards, stacked, glinting like diamonds off shafts of light, red like the chorus that springs forth from their chests, wet and warm and—

_Yes, yes, yes._

They are painting the roses red.

\---

There is no time. There is no sand. There is no color of the past, no gold of the future. There is only now, and _this_ , and a girl whose footsteps are quick as a rabbit’s, whose sword is the color of the tears in his dreams.

\---

Time springs: back, upside-down, in, besides, within, without.

\---

Memory springs: red, gold, white, blue.

\---

—then back to gold, which is halved as easily as a deck of playing cards, and bleeds as red as blooming roses.

Gold and red fall.

\---

Everything _snaps_ back into the present. Three things happen at once:

The queen loses her game.

A man falls from a throne.

The cat’s grin vanishes.

Red.

Gold.

White. 

Time goes on.

\---

Salt and sand, white and red—

These memories bruise, too.

Gold is left behind—gold like a girl from the desert, gold like a swinging pair of dice.

\---

The voice is gone, the ticking has stopped, but there is still one thing left to do.

Because at three he _fell—fell—fell,_ and after three decades—three generations of rabbit holes, of red blooming warrens—he is ready to climb out, to fall _up,_ to claim a title that has long been dead.

Because he has walked upside-down, has stood sideways, has been turned inside-out and fallen in-between the cracks of himself. Why shouldn’t he step through to his past? 

\---

Here are the colors of his present:

Red is no longer beside him, no longer a walking companion.

It is behind, in the shape of salt, in the shape of his memories.

Gold does not direct his footsteps. It stands beside him, in the shape of a rabbit-girl’s grin.

His future is colorless.

It is a blinding, star-burst white.

It is aboveground, out of the earth, out of the warren, right-side up.

And it will take on the shape of his remaining days, in swirling strands all his own.


End file.
